Phoenix Rising anyone?

I will be on a plane at 6:30 am tomorrow, bound for NJ for a surprise party for my dad's 70th birthday.

Travel used to be such a joy. After my husband and I got married we rode our bicycles from Florida to California, then spent a year backpacking around Africa and Asia. We didn't even have a plane ticket home, we just bought what we needed as we went along.

Now travel seems to be sandwiched in between my "real life," and is considerable more hectic. Oh well.

Part of the reason it is so rushed (Friday to Tuesday trip) is that I need to get back in time for Finding Om on Tuesday night. The first two classes have gone really well. I am so, so thrilled to be able to make a positive impact in people's lives. I have gotten great feedback and am hoping hoping hoping that it just keeps getting better, that the effects keep building and that the participants are (statistically) significantly better off at the end of Finding Om then they were at the beginning.

The measurable qualities of that would mean being more mindful, bingeing less, and demonstrating better body responsiveness. Unmeasurable would be the greater sense of well-being that we all know yoga brings.

In other yoga news... I took my kids to a class at Bija led by a Dharma Mittra disciple. It was so much fun, full of laughter and joy. My older daughter loved it so much that she wants to go back every week! Cool. We are going to go tonight and see if the magic is still there.

Does anyone have experience with Phoenix Rising Yoga therapy? I just became aware of this at SYTAR and am considering attending their level 1 training. I'd love to hear what other people know about it, how it has affected therapy practices, etc.

I have a beautiful practice

I was running through the park this morning when I was hit with the realization that I love my yoga practice. I don't mean I love practicing, I mean I love my own personal practice. I can't do half the things Yoga Chickie can do, and I probably can't do half the things you, the reader can do either.


But I can do a lot of things I didn't used to be able to do. Every day I am opening my hips, opening my chest, able to straighten my legs better in navasana than last time. Or maybe not. And that's okay. I love how I feel when I practice. I accept where I am, knowing that I have lots of room to improve, but that if I stay just where I am, I'm still doing fine. I love that I keep at it and enjoy it just for being what it is.

I really mean this, too. I may want to run faster and longer, I may want to lift heavier and get better definition, but when I comes to my yoga practice, I'm beautiful.

Finding Om Launch

Finding Om yoga class and discussion group meets tonight for the first time!!!!!!!

I'm kind of nervous...

I want it to be good. I want people to benefit. I want people to show up. I want people to not drop out. I want my post-asana group discussion to be relevant and helpful and worth people's time. I want to keep my paperwork in order and not lose things. I want to enter my data clearly and accurately. I want my results to be statistically significant. I want to write a brilliant, publishable dissertation and make a contribution to the field. I want to develop a niche that I can use in my own career.

There. My desires have been put out into the universe.

What I'm thinking about today

You have the choice to ignore all of your “stuff,” to eat or use some other avoidance strategy in the hopes that it will “go away.” And it may go away for a little while, but it will come back. So why not make the choice to work it out now? In yoga class, through the development of a yoga practice, you are being given a chance to work through all of that crap, to begin to open that door. Sure, you can keep it closed. But why not take a chance?

Sometimes life, like yoga, can be uncomfortable. But on your mat, if you can learn to get back into your body, you can learn to take better care of it. By taking care of your body you can regain freedom and by gaining freedom you can regain joy. So why not take the opportunity and go for it? Throw yourself into doing your least favorite asana. Because if you practice tolerating discomfort now, practice breathing in a time of stress when it doesn’t really matter, you are creating patterns for tolerating distress when it does matter. Go for it. Why not? How often has your intuition been wrong? Not your logic, not your intellect, but your intuition? Or have you forgotten how to listen to that inner voice?

Can you acknowledge that sometimes your body is working with you, not against you?

Yoga sculpt

What exactly is yoga sculpt? It isn't yoga, and it isn't a weight lifting workout. I did a yoga sculpt class yesterday with a teacher whom I love-- in fact, the teacher who is going to do my Finding Om classes (which begin Tuesday!). I am a little sore in my glutes today, which is definitely from that, because I didn't do anything else to make them sore. And my arms were burning during class. But I'm not sure I liked it. I guess it's good if I don't have time to do yoga and lift separately, but I didn't really feel like I got the full benefit of either.

I had a great run today. Still need to work on hill climbing and endurace to get ready for "America's highest road race", the Mt. Evans Ascent, but I'm feeling like I'm coming back. For once in my life, I am able to appreciate that the work I'm doing is paying off and that I'm starting to feel better both physically and mentally because of it.

Damn. I must be getting old, having revelations in which I am actually being kind to myself.

Full disclosure

I ate the cheesecake. And it was good.

Why Philadelphians are so fat

This morning I made my first-ever cheesecake. I don't know how it tastes, and I don't plan to find out. Looks fine and everything but ouch, is cheesecake ever fatty! It is mostly cream cheese, which has 100 calories and 10 grams of fat per ounce. Then it has sour cream and 3 eggs and a cup of sugar. I'm not a huge dairy person, either. In fact, I never eat dairy except for the milk in my coffee. Cheese smells funny to me and milk tastes bad.

Why make this fat-laden doorstop of a baked good, you wonder? Today, based on an appointment with my 10-year-old daughter's endocrinologist, we decided to try and get insurance to cover growth hormone shots to compensate for severely delayed growth-- which means a shot daily for the next 2-5 years, or the duration of her growth years. Needless to say, for the recipient of these shots this was not good news. Poor thing loves cheesecake. So cheesecake she shall have.

SYTAR recap

I spent this past Thursday-Sunday morning at the Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research in LA. Basic impressions follow, broken out into personal and professional categories.


PROFESSIONAL:
*Yoga therapy is a growing field, being used to treat both physical and mental ailments. The International Association of Yoga Therapists, which sponsors Sytar, is working hard to legitimize the field in the eyes of Westerners, especially those who can pay for it, like insurance companies. To this end, they encourage and are even hoping to be able to fund, yoga research of the sort I am doing with Finding Om. (I have not been funded by them. This is an unpaid advertisement). They also encourage networking and learning opportunities, such as this conference. If the 700 attendees are any indication, interest is growing.

*Yoga therapy is very slow. Yoga therapy practices involve long, often assisted holds in which the client is encouraged to play their edge in order to make mental breakthroughs. I think most of us have cried on our mat, if you're me notably in pigeon, often without any clear sense of why the tears are flowing. Yoga therapy-- at least the mental health type (as opposed to treating physical ailments like back pain, about which I have no information because that was not my interest) takes this one step further and adds a verbal component. What is going on for you right now? Even if you don't know concretely, even exploring the physical sensation can lead to a mental awakening, a clarification about situations in life which are causing stress and tension. I do not feel ready to do this yet, because I have no training in anatomy/physiology and am afraid I'd hurt someone. But there is a lot I can take from this, and even might begin to incorporate self-guided yoga postures into sessions. Not that I have any individual clients right now.

*Research such as what I am doing with Finding Om is much needed. From hearing the abstracts and papers others presented I think my study is pretty reasonable. Certainly not comparable to the multiple-author, multi-year, 100-subject studies of some, but there were definitely other pilot studies out there with roughly 10 subjects. All of them looked at yoga for much shorter times than I had thought would be the norm, making my 10 week study absolutely comparable to the length of others.

*If you are looking to treat depression with yoga, check out Amy Weintraub. Chick knows her stuff. If you want more info contact me.

PERSONAL:
*I do not, in general, enjoy a slow yoga practice. I need to MOVE. Give me my power yoga/ kundalini practice any day. Despite the morning practices led by celeb teachers such as Leslie Kaminer, I had to sneak out every day and go run on the beach. Short: just 30 mins one day and 40 the other, but that centered me a whole lot more than the chants and Swami Veda Bharata-led meditations that began each day.

*I am not seeking something new. I have a religion. I have an ethical system. I was a bit put off by the sizeable number of people at Sytar who seemed to think becoming a semi-Hindu was the secret to their redemption. This was not the majority of attendees, but a there were plenty of them. I am a Westerner grounded in western ways. I have been to India and love India. I named my daughter India. Nonetheless, if I feel some great need to chant I can go to synagogue on Friday night and be satisfied. (That said, the Saturday night kirtan with Dave Stringer was a total blast). That I like yoga and am in awe of its healing properties is kind of a duh to any reader of this blog. That said, I don't feel any need whatsoever to become other than what I am.

*Too much introspection may kill me. There was a lot of didactics combined with practice demos. For example, a workshop on yoga to treat depression led by Richard Miller and Amy Weintraub kicked off with a 1/2 hour tag team yoga nidra. In fact, every single session seemed to start and/or end with some kind of yoga nidra. At first it was really helpful and relaxing, and I even came up with a huge sankalpa to apply to my life (allow myself to be more vulnerable). But eventually, enough is enough. But maybe that's just me. I couldn't believe how many people showed up for the optional mediation on Saturday night with Swami Veda Bharata. More sitting and going internal???????? Not for me. I was thrilled to go meet my cousin who lives in LA and take a break from my month of abstinence (which, except for Saturday night, is going smoothly. Even withstood the sake test when we went out for sushi last night. Now that's what I call will power. Or determination. Or self-punishment. Or all of the above).

Too many carrots

Before I left for California I bought a 5 pound bag of carrots at Costco, which just opened in town and has become a bit of an addiction for me. While I was in LA at SYTAR (more on this another day) my husband became domestic, went to the market and, among a billion other things, bought another pound of carrots. I already made carrot cake, which didn't seem to dent the pile. I have a recipe for some sort of Scandinavian carrot pancake, yummy-sounding roasted carrot sauce, and carrot tsimmes. Any other carrot heavy recipe ideas?

Thanks, Yogi Bhajan

I don't think my breakfast agreed with me today. It was just a bowl of nonfat plain yogurt, a sliced up pear, sprinkle of cinnamon and a few drops of stevia. Maybe it was last night's dinner, which had lots of cauliflower and coconut water.

In either case, by about 8am my stomach was flipping and gurgling and keeping me beholden to the bathroom. Seriously, I was back in there every 20-30 minutes. So it was with some trepidation that I set out for Kundalini yoga class. Set my mat up by the door that goes out to the bathroom, just in case.

I was little concerned when the teacher announced we would be working our digestive system, since mine was working plenty hard already, thank you very much. To my amazement, not only did I make it through about 25 minutes of intense dynamic and static twisting, but my stomach was fine after that. FINE. Sure, it was bound to get better eventually. But this was dramatic. From emergency runs to the bathroom to feeling (just about) fine. Thanks, Yogi Bhajan.

Tomorrow I am off to SYTAR. Will blog about the joys of yoga research upon my return.

Beginner's Mind

I did a relatively long run today with my running partner Scoop. By relatively I mean not as long as I have done in the past and not as long as I will be doing later in the season but the longest I have done in a while. It was hard but is getting easier and overall felt good.

Then I went to yoga class, mostly to support Julie who opened up The Bija Studio yesterday.
Oy vey. What I have learned:

#1. I love running. I adore how running makes me feel. I like how running shapes my body (read: keeps me on the thinner side). I do not want to live without running, even as difficult as it has been lately.

#2. Running does NOT compliment yoga, although yoga certainly compliments running.

#3. Today's vinyasa class was insanely difficult, yet felt wonderful. Possibly because I was tired from the run, my balance was worse than usual, my hips were tighter than usual, my hamstrings were more inflexible than usual -- and I didn't care. I had neither the energy nor the desire to muscle my way into or through any asanas. The surprise was, it felt really liberating. You know how in garudasana/eagle you wind one leg up and over and (attempt to) tuck your toes around your calf? Well, I kind of wound it around and used it as a kickstand. On both sides. No attempt to balance whatsoever. And my standing leg wasn't even all that bent, because my quads were burning. Guess what? Nothing happened! No one laughed or pointed or called me a dork. ANd I still feel like I benefitted from the pose. That could be repeated in some variation for all the asanas today, in terms of both my level of "expertise" and my level of perceived benefit.

#4. A protien-based snack would probably have prevented the energy crash better than a pear, no matter how delicious and juicy that pear may have been.

Hold me accountable

As of today, I am not going to drink alcohol until March 28th, when I will celebrate my dad's 70th birthday. I usually have a glass or two of wine at night, but have decided that forgoing booze will jump start the weight loss I am so desperate to achieve.

Abstinence should be easy this weekend, because I will be in LA at the SYTAR conference, a.k.a. symposium on yoga therapy and research. I'm pretty excited, as this is right up my alley and couldn't come at a more perfect time-- the week before I begin classes for Finding Om. For those of you who have not been reading, that is the yoga class tailored specifically for binge eating disorder upon which I am basing my doctoral dissertation. I am really psyched to be able to go and listen to all the successful yoga researchers, do yoga every morning with "celebrity" teachers, and just generally soak up the energy.

If I'm motivated I may try to get out and run in the warm weather before 7am yoga, at least for 20 minutes or so.